Back in the old days, the primary way to get a message to someone was to write the message down on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, seal the envelope so no one could see the message, put the person's address on the envelope, put a stamp on the envelope, and drop the envelope into a big metal box. A few days later, the envelope would be delivered to the person for whom the message was intended. This person would then open up the envelope and read the message contained inside.
The above message delivery approach was called "mail". Mail worked great for hundreds of years, but then people decided that they could no longer wait for a few days to get a message. They wanted it faster. Telephones were great for interactively communicating informal messages quickly, but many messages still needed to be received in a textual form. Express mail cut mail delivery time of messages down to one day in most cases, but this wasn't fast enough either. Facsimile machines and electronic mail cut delivery time of messages down to minutes, but, alas, people still found this to be insufficient. They wanted it faster.
The problem is that while e-mail and facsimile machines can indeed deliver a message in minutes, the speed of e-mail and fax machines does precious little good if the person for whom the message is intended is not there to receive it. Increasingly, in today's mobile society, this is precisely the case. A fax or e-mail containing an important message is sent in a manner of minutes to its intended recipient--where it waits for hours, days or even weeks until they get back to read it.
In the midst of this desire to communicate quickly with increasingly mobile people, the pager has emerged as a way to get messages to people within seconds--even if they are away from their office. Today's pager devices often contain a multi-line display capable of displaying lengthy messages. An example of such a prior art pager device is shown in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. 5,043,721 to May. A paging service provider, such as HP StarLink, sends a message to such a device by broadcasting the message, along with an identifier of the device, over a wireless paging network in a predetermined geographical area. The pager device, if in range of this wireless paging network, will recognize that it is the intended recipient of this message and display or otherwise process this message.
While a pager device allows for the quick delivery of a message to a mobile recipient, it fails to match the reliability and security of mail and other less speedy message delivery systems. Since the wireless paging network transmits messages through the air over radio frequencies, they are capable of being intercepted by anyone who has a receiver tuned to the frequency of the transmitter. In addition, if the intended recipient travels with his or her pager device out of the predetermined geographical area of the paging service, an important message can quite literally be lost in space and never received by its intended recipient.